Did Project Phoenix Developers Cheat Backers To Create New Game?

There is a lot of risk in making things. In fact, there’s a lot of risking in making anything. In this day and age, you have to fear being ripped off, stolen from, having your IPs infringed on, and so on and so forth. Which makes things like crowdfunding a very hard thing to do. Because for those who don’t have a big following, they have to convince people who don’t know them to invest in them. Now sometimes, a project speaks for itself. But other times, it can be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Like Project Phoenix.

Allow us to rewind the clock. In 2013, several prominent RPG developers got together to start a crowdfunding Kickstarter called Project Phoenix. The goal was to raise money to make a “next level” game. And they got funded! A million dollars plus went to the game. Which meant, that the team needed to start working on the game. But instead, 4 years later, they haven’t released anything other than simple art and gameplay videos. And if one of their own team is to be believed, we now know why.

Image: Aurizen via Neogaf

This post was found on the Project Phoenix Facebook page (it has since been taken down, but put on sites like NeoGaf), and it’s from one of the development team who apparently saw, and was told, that the Kickstarter project was a scam to make another game by the company called Tiny Metal.

Naturally, this has spread across the internet, and even onto the Kickstarter page for the game. Now, the team has since taken down the post and denied what’s going on. And some of the backers have noted that some of Tariq’s claims are false. But, one thing is clear, Tiny Metal is a lot farther along than Project Phoenix, and that’s wrong on many levels.